The usual state that he was in during the afternoons and evenings had dissipated. Elain had attributed his normal enthusiasm to him merely having more energy later in the day. She had experienced it herself, with Nesta being much more approachable if one waited at least an hour after she had woken, but this change made her question that assumption about Azriel.
“Azriel,” Lucien began to say, but he was cut off.
“Mrs. Bates has assured me that dinner would be waiting for you when you came home, but we should head straight there so that we don’t keep them waiting,” Azriel said. It was the most he might have ever said in one utterance. He was always considerate of others, but this concern seemed unwarranted, given the trio’s habit of keeping unusual hours.
“Of course,” Elain answered, placing a hand on his arm. “Might I have an escort to dinner, then?” She smiled up at him and caught Lucien’s look of relief out of the corner of her eye. Already, she had found herself a place here, a role she could fill that Lucien hadn’t realized would be lacking.
They entered the candle-lit dining room and took their usual seats. Elain’s gracious attitude filled the room with syrupy sweetness, allowing everyone to focus on her instead of the strange mood Azriel had found himself in.
They spoke about the weather, about some local gossip that might be of interest, and inevitably, the topic of conversation became the case that they were working on. The Widow, they had decided to call the killer, even though she never married her victims. It was more as if she acted with the intention of being tied to the victim, ensuring that assets were transferred to her before any legal contracts were binding, and then the target ended up dead, as well as much poorer than they had been before they met her.
That Amarantha had acted in the same manner, albeit in the spotlight, seemed at the very least suspicious. Elain didn’t want to hope that the woman she credited with the destruction of her family had committed these crimes as well, but it was difficult to think of any other connections that were more likely.
And so, with that attempt at being open-minded, they began to make a list of women - for Elain still insisted that the killer was female, despite Lucien’s initial suspicions about Graysen and his father - who had a habit of coming into society and then disappearing, seeming to fit in just long enough without being fully integrated into the tiny niches that the rich created amongst themselves.
Elain and Lucien had spent most of dinner chatting about the details of another case that they had been working on when Azriel made an exasperated sound.
“Sometimes, I hate the work you do,” Azriel said. His fork clanged down onto his plate and he stood. “Apologies, Elain, but I am tired and think I will retire early. Lucien.” He gave a quick bow before leaving the dining room.
Elain looked to Lucien. “Did I say something wrong? Anything in particular?”
Lucien placed his hand over hers. “No, Elain. I think that the case was perhaps too close to home, is all. I will go check on him, if you don’t mind.”
Elain nodded and was left alone at the table. The case they had been discussing was of a child, a boy abused and abandoned and eventually sold into prostitution before his corpse had been discarded in an alleyway.
While she had always thought of her gift as a way to help others, Elain had never supposed that someone so close to home might need the same assistance. With a polite smile to the servant attending to their dinner, she stood and gave instructions.
*****
Elain decided to leave Lucien and Azriel to their own devices, opting instead to read in bed before sleeping. They had a history that she could only begin to understand, and if their discussion had ignited some anger in him, she didn’t know its source. It would be best, she thought, to let the two of them work through those problems in the way they knew best.
She was awoken to Lucien knocking on her door. “Elain,” he said, his voice coming through muted. “Elain, I need you.”
Elain sat up in bed, mentally preparing herself for whatever scene they might need to investigate.
“Come in,” she called out.
Lucien strode into the room as if he had expected her to be fully dressed for the day, at this early hour, but upon finding her in her dressing gown, he averted his eyes.
“I have been informed of another crime, we need to go see the body, I would like your expertise, or that is, your special skills, or what you would like to call it. I’m just not sure, and I think that your abilities might be useful, in this case.”
Lucien averted his eyes as Elain stood from the bed, and she grinned.
“Lucien?”
“Yes?”
“Look at me,” she said.
Lucien looked to the ceiling before granting her request, and finally took her in, with no small amount of guilt and sin on his face.
“You burst in here, calling my name, early in the morning, and you expect to find me, what? Fully dressed? Do you think that I sleep corseted and wrapped in layers of fabric?” With each word, Elain stepped closer to Lucien.
“Of course not. I apologize, Elain, I wasn’t thinking.”
“Oh,” she said, dragging her finger up the front of his worsted vest. “So what did you hope to encounter here?” She rested her finger underneath Lucien’s chin, forcing him to look at her.
“Certainly not this,” was his only reply.
Elain released Lucien’s chin and turned to pull on her robe.
“Alright, where are we going? What do you know about this case?” She tied the sash of her robe as she spoke, all the while noticing the Lucien did not seem to fully exist in that world, for the time being.
“There has been another murder. A young boy, same profile as before. I want to leave before Azriel knows why we have left.”
Elain crossed her arms. “Of course I will help. Now, could you please leave my room so I can dress?”
Lucien stumbled, making his excuses, before leaving her alone in her room.
*****
At the crime scene, Elain was taken by a familiar sense of loss. She experienced this each time at a murder, but it was stronger when the victim was young.
By the time they arrived back at the station, evidence, notes, and impressions in tow, Elain was exhausted. Lucien sat behind his desk, per usual, and Elain sat across from him, thumbing through his notes. She understood the motive behind this crime, thanks to her power, the logic or rationale behind it, but she would never understand it on a deeper level. She would never understand the person, the criminal who found the need to take others’ lives,
Hours passed as they worked, discussing potential relevant information and coming up with theories together. Elain was done with it all, the constant immersion in darkness, when she slumped against the back of her seat.
“Lucien,” Elain began, a lilt to her voice. She ran her fingers over the files that rested on the desk.
“Yes, Elain?”
“Why do you do this? It seems like, even before Jess, you were ready to reject your father’s way of life. Why?”
Lucien sat on the edge of his desk. “Those are mighty heavy questions for this time of the day.”
Elain glanced out his office window and was surprised to see the sun had begun to set. They had left before sunrise. “Would any other time of the day be more appropriate? For any of this?” She tried to keep the sadness from her voice, but it cracked slightly.
“I suppose not,” Lucien conceded. He picked up a stack of papers and began to roll them in his hands.
“You know my family’s business?” He waved in a direction that Elain supposed represented something of significance.
“Steel?”
“Or robber baron, if you’d like to use the term you mean.”
“Alright,” Elain replied. “Robber baron. What of it?”
“I had no interest, to put it lightly. I still don’t. And I thought that having older brothers, being the youngest, I would never have to submit to my father’s expectations. I learned very young that wasn’t the case. My brothers would torment me, just because they could. It was never that horrible,” he said, noting Elain’s alarmed expression. “They just took every opportunity they had to remind me that I was the youngest, would never be chosen first in anything.”
Lucien poured a glass of whiskey that he kept in his desk. Elain shook her head when he offered her a pour.
“I never had any interest in my father’s business. I saw what it did to my brothers, this constant need for one-upmanship, to put others down in order to drag one’s self up. He hurt many, many people in the process of making my family rich. And despite the fact that everyone in my family made it clear I would never inherit the lion’s share of the business, somehow, I was still to be held responsible. To carry the mantle of the family reputation, so to speak.” He drank what was in his glass in one gulp. “Even if that reputation was one that tended to disregard the law and pretend that power justified all morally questionable decisions.”
“And so being here, working for the law?” Elain asked.
“Ah, yes. I wondered to myself, one day, what would be the opposite of my father? Where could I do the most good?”
“And prove an occasional thorn in his side?” Elain asked with a grin.
“Of course. That is secretly the best part of my job, you know. I have the law on my side, and my father can never speak a word against that, lest I ask one of my colleagues to look into his business dealings a bit more closely.”
“Can you tell me more about your connection to Azriel?” Elain moved forward in her chair, sitting on its edge. “Why did you choose one another, rather than acquiesce to your father’s requests, to stay on his good side? Heaven knows how much good someone with your heart and resources could do, if you had remained in his will.”
Elain opened her mouth to speak again when they were interrupted by a knock at the door. One of the officers, someone who could count the numbers of months they had been on the job on one hand, opened the door and passed a cream-colored envelope to Lucien.
Lucien took the letter from the officer and opened it brusquely.
“Elain, we need to leave.”
“What’s wrong?” She scanned his face and opened her palms, but couldn’t see anything beyond his pain.
“We need to find Azriel.”
